Science Events at the Bollington Festival

Science Events at the Bollington Festival – Hunting Dinosaurs

The Bollington Festival in Cheshire keeps growing and each year it gets bigger and better. The Cheshire town of Bollington is just a few miles north of Macclesfield and it has become quite famous for its Festival. This year, for the first time, there will be a series of events and presentations with a science theme. The Festival has a dedicated science group and a total of 8 fantastic science themed events will be held over the duration of the Festival, which itself runs from the 8th to the 25th of May this year.

In keeping with the rest of the Festival, the scientific presentations are varied and cover a diverse range of subjects, for example Dr. Graeme Jones from the School of Physical and Geographical Sciences at Keele University will be presenting the definitive scientific guide to a good night out – “Saturday Night Science”. In recognition of 2009 being the international year of astronomy, Dr Jamie Gilmour from the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of Manchester will be providing visitors to the Festival with a guide to meteorites, and how our little part of the Milky Way was formed. His presentation is entitled “Meteorites, Stardust and the Solar System”.

Of course palaeontology will be represented…

Dr. Phil Manning from the University of Manchester, will be giving a talk on “Hunting Dinosaurs in the 21st Century” on the evening of the 12th May. Knowing Phil, this will be a super presentation and extremely enjoyable as Dr Manning will no doubt, enthusiastically guide us through the latest research on the mummified Hadrosaurine (duck-billed dinosaur), discovered in Dakota. Perhaps he will combine this with further information on several other projects, including the use of computer modelling techiniques to estimate dinosaur velocity, a specific software programme developed by the University of Manchester, to calculate just how first some bipedal dinosaurs could run.

The first dinosaurs walked the earth over 220 million years ago, yet people are still captivated by these amazing creatures. With the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On the Origin of Species” dinosaurs are one of the oldest evolutionary links to one of the worlds most diverse species of modern vertebrate, birds. Indeed, there are still more species of birds on this planet than mammals – perhaps a testament to their adaptability. This talk will take the audience on a journey from the Badlands of North Dakota, supercomputers in Manchester and particle accelerators with dinosaurs as targets in California!

The Promotional Poster for the Dinosaur Presentation

Picture Credit: Annette Hurst (Bollington Festival)

Pleasing to see a picture of an Ornithopod (Iguanodontid) promoting Dr Phil’s presentation, which will focus on a superbly preserved Ornithopod fossil discovered in America.

For more information about the Bollington Festival, including how to book for events and presentations visit the Festival website: Bollington Festival